covered by excrescences sometimes two inches long, with sharp, hooked thorns at their ends.The timber is in use for building purposes, but it is considered a material especially adapted for making waggons.
In the afternoon we passed some salt-pools, in which I was surprised to find some half-starved fish. The fish themselves were not of any uncommon kind; to me the perplexing thing was how they could have made their way to so great a height above the table-land, and the only explanation I could give was that they had been carried thither by birds.
Evening overtook us in the valley of the upper Sirorume, just at the spot where the stream makes its way over interesting shelves of sandstone, thence to turn south, and then south-south-east to join the Limpopo.
While proceeding through the sandy forest in the inner bend of the Sirorume, we noticed from the waggon an appearance in the ground as though the long grass had been flattened by a heavy roller six or seven feet wide. It proved to be an elephant-track, and two Bamangwatos on their way to the Transvaal informed us that it was made by a herd of the great small-tusked elephants that were known to be wandering about the boundaries of Sekhomo’s and Sechele’s territory. I entertained no doubt that it was the same herd of which I had heard before, and which continued to haunt the same region for two years afterwards, when it was destroyed by the Damara emigrants.
